This Week from Sister Davis

I have a doppleganger!! We found this in Mormon.org. She is serving at the SLC Visitors' Center and even I think she looks like me. Scary!

Matching skirts. I asked her where she got hers and she said " I don't know, my mom got it for me." Same here! Yay for moms :)

Our mini-missionary Sister Whitaker

Sushi on P-day! Sister Jones. 

Brother Siep

Friends and Family,

It's been a full week and a wonderful one! We are finally meeting with Richard tomorrow. We've been e-mailing him from the teaching center every other day and then calling him to follow up with his Book of Mormon reading and thoughts about the Mormon messages that we send him. He is amazing. Every morning he prays about something that he doesn't understand or needs help with and literally finds answers on a daily basis from the Book of Mormon that in his words "blow his socks off." The one that impressed us the most was when he prayed for the strength to quit drinking, opened to a random page in Alma and read  "And now, my son, see that ye take care of these sacred things, yea, see that ye look to God and live. Go unto this people and declare the word, and be sober. My son, farewell." He called us and when we answered he immediately said in his New York accent, "Something is happening here!" All I can say is that there are miracles happening every day with him. His wife still just thinks he is going through a phase, but we're hopeful that if we can get them both to the Visitors' Center she'll feel the difference herself. We have a missionary fireside this weekend with music by the missionaries and testimonies from recent converts that would be just the thing, so hopefully we can convince them to come.

We are still meeting with Susan. She isn't doing very well health-wise. We taught the word of wisdom and law of chastity this week and she disagrees with both. When we talked about her body being a temple she argued the point that her temple is already broken and if she's going to die anyway she doesn't see the harm in doing the very last few things that make her happy. We promised her the happiness that comes from living the commandments and assured her that while her illness may not be taken away she is still entitled to increased health and and increased measure of the spirit if she will keep those commandments. I felt horrible because we're just these 21 year old girls that are perfectly healthy and she's probably thinking that we just don't understand. She has been avoiding reading the Book of Mormon and we think it's because she knows that she'll find out it's true and then she'll know the church is true and she'll be accountable to live those commandments. She still wants to get baptized so now it's really up to her to find out. She's great and we're really praying for her and trying to be there for her in any way that we can.

We had zone conference this week and those are always great. Our zone put together an arrangement of "Brightly Beams our Father's Mercy" which worked out well and was powerful to sing with other missionaries. We left the conference with a renewed excitement to flood the earth with the Book of Mormon and since have given more out and been better about teaching people about it immediately upon meeting them. We also went on splits with some members from our ward so we could meet and teach more people. These two things combined have produced several potentials that we are excited about following up with this week. 

We had the blessing of another mini-missionary this week. Her name is Sister Whitaker and she was a trooper. She was at the tail end of a cold which meant she was already behind on homework AND she missed her senior homecoming weekend to serve with us. Pretty impressive. She was great and the three of us had a lot of fun together. At one point we were tracting and had to be a little grateful that no one was home at one doorstep because Sister Jones said something and had us all laughing uncontrollably. Later we let Sister Whitaker take the lead and when one woman answered "yes" to her question "would you like to hear a message?" She replied with a very surprised "oh!" Ha ha she did awesome. I love having minis because it's such a good reminder that what we do is an exciting thing and we're involved in a very important work every day! 

The Visitors' Center has been a lot of fun this week. It's been busy and we've had the opportunity to teach a lot more than we have in previous weeks. One young man that came in was from Russia and is here trying to get his green card. He was orthodox christian as he says most Russians are and he said they are all unhappy. I don't know how true that is, but he said he was impressed with how much everyone smiles here and wanted to learn more about why that was. We showed him the pictures of the inside of the temple and explained the importance of covenants and he just said, "this is how it should be." Long story short he left with a copy of the Book of Mormon in English and Russian and I was able to send the missionaries to his mother in Moscow. The VC is such an amazing place for people to come and learn about the gospel because who knows what other opportunity he would have had. 

Well I love you all! Thanks for everything you do for me.

Sister Davis

P.S. Deena is getting married?! Let's bump that wedding back to July ;) Just kidding. Congratulations!